Bad Luck Love
by kalstrai-and-srd
Summary: He who is afraid of bad luck will never know good.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter rating: K  
Chapter warnings: None.  
Pairing: You'll see.. :)  
Spoilers: Some  
Length: Multi-chapter

Summary: He who is afraid of bad luck will never know good.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything, but the stuff I have made up :)

**Prologue**

Bad luck is defined by the dictionary as;

1. An unfortunate state resulting from unfavorable outcomes.  
2. An unpredictable outcome that is unfortunate; "if I didn't have bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all".  
3. Unnecessary and unforeseen trouble resulting from an unfortunate event.

But when something, anything, that could be concidered as bad luck took place inside the laboratory inside this particular facility, all eyes turned to look at the chubby woman sitting next to a computer with her hazel eyes wide and her small mouth already forming an apology. It wasn't her fault in a traditional sense, but as her being the only person in the building with the uncanny ability to cause what ultimately could be descirbed as bad luck, to people around her... Yeah, all eyes turned to her when the mysterious blue smoke was emmited from the mass spectrometer.

"I didn't mean to do that." She smiled nervously. "Honestly, I didn't even know I could do that."

Multible sighs could be heard. Heads shook and eyes were rolled. Yeah, they knew she didn't mean it. Still, oddly specific unfortunate things occurred when she was around. Last time it had been one of the lab techs, Andy. He had slipped while carrying a stack of papers of a particularly important test they had finally managed to complete and replicate to the point it could be shown to the investors. Half of the papers had fallen to a puddle of a highly flammable solution that was accidentally pushed off a near by table just as a small spark flew from a just lit bunsen lamp. Needless to say, it wasn't a very good day for Andy.

He had lost an eyebrow and hal of his fringe in the process.

"Can it be fixed?" The woman tried even though she was pertty sure she already knew the answer to her question.

"Blue smoke means it wont work again, ever. You know that Maggie." A tall blonde in a white lab coat sighed in a tired voice. It had been one of those days again.

"Yeah maybe." The one called Maggie shrugged. "Look Jenny, I'm going to call the maintenance and see if they can provide you with a new mass spec."

"No. I'll do that. You go and do some paperwork or something for a while." Jenny gave her short co-worker a comforting pat on the shoulder. She really did like the lab tech, but sometimes Jenny just grew tired of cleaning out the mess the other woman left behind her where ever she walked.

Yeah, paperwork. That was safe. Maggie was very good at paperwork.

So she exited the lab.

The security guard outside turned to look at her with a smile, but it was replaced with a terrified frown. He even took a cautious step back. Maggie rolled her eyes. Yeah, she was bad news, but come on, honestly now. She wasn't a bad person. She didn't beat old ladies or abuse kids, or kick animals. Hell, she wasn't even dangerous. True, bruises and twisted ankles followed her like an accident prone cloud of badly timed slapstick comedy, but no one had ever died near her. On the contrary, she had been known to save lives occasionally. Mostly accidentally though.

Oh well. She could always go up to the engineering department to see if they have anything that needs to be filed away. Which they probably did. For a bunch of geniuses, the engineering department had an incredibly lousy record of filing things that needed to be filed. And they liked Maggie, for she was willing to do the boring paperwork for them while they blew up stuff.

Maggie sighed.

She turned a corner.

And hit her face to something that felt like a brickwall.

0o0o0o0o0o0o

TBC.


	2. Chapter 2

**Bad Luck Love.**

Chapter rating: K  
Chapter warnings: None.  
Pairing: You'll see.. :)  
Spoilers: Some  
Length: Multi-chapter

Summary: He who is afraid of bad luck will never know good.

Disclaimer: We do not own anything, but the stuff we have made up :)

**Chapter 1.**

The wall wasn't brick, or a wall. Maggie still bounced, in danger of falling before strong arms caught her until she found her footing. She started to cursed until she looked up into the handsome face of Tony Stark, all perfect black suit and sunglasses even in the sub basement. He was nothing like what she had come accustomed in the lower levels. Lab techs wore comfortable clothing under their lab coats. Jeans and tee's and shorts. Certainly not designer suits and shoes. Maggie, embarrassed, found herself staring at those beautiful Italian shoes, more expensive than her car. She felt like the earth really should just swallow her in the spot, but then he offered her a surprisingly polite smile.

"Hello there, just passing through. Sorry about that. Actually, you might know**, **this way to the forensics lab? I need to use the mass spec."

"Mr… Stark I… I," Maggie glanced back behind her, ominous blue smoke still hanging in the air. "I... no. I mean yes that way to the forensics lab, but no... You see it has some 'technical' problems right now. Something odd, just seemed to …"

From inside the room a yell called out, "the fire started again! Someone, get the extinguisher!"

"… start on fire." Maggie finished flatly, fidgeting and fighting the urge to giggle nervously as he looked down at her all perfect and stunning. Was it like this for every woman that met the legendary business man of Stark Tower? Probably all but his assistant, Maggie inwardly mused.

"Fire," Tony raised an eyebrow. "Right. Ok listen, you look reasonably bright. What's your name?"

"Maggie."

"Ok, Maggie, as luck would have it I need that equipment. I'm on a very tight schedule," he glanced at his designer Omega watch. "And don't have time to help fix it."

"You think it can be fixed?" Maggie blurted out, relieved. Tony looked down at her over the top of his expensive looking sunglasses.

"Maggie, anything can be fixed," he was already tapping on his phone, the holographic display blurring and buzzing with the speed of his thoughts. "But this one… here…. Will…. Be… replaced." He made one more motion with his fingers and the display disappeared. He smiled at Maggie, displaying perfect teeth. "Courtesy of Stark Enterprises. Because I need something analyzed..."

"Oh! Mr Stark! Is she bothering you? No one told us you were coming. Did she do anything to you? Did anything... happen?" Jenny bustled from the door followed by a burst of smoke and louder yelling before the door closed shut again. She stepped forward closer to the pair before she realized who she was standing close to and stopped nervously three steps back. The shorter woman seemed somewhat agitated. And when Maggie Smith got agitated, something bad usually happened."That is, Maggie sometimes can cause… "

"Accidents," Maggie finished quickly.

"I was going to say disasters," Jenny said glancing back at the door. "Maggie was just going to do some paperwork." Jenny added the last with a glare. Maggie, though bolstered by her conversation with Tony Stark, withered beneath that glare. Just her bad luck that she was meeting one of the most important people in S.H.I.E.L.D. just after destroying the one piece of equipment he'd come to use. She jammed her hands into her pockets and sulked off towards engineering. At least they appreciated her impeccable organizational skills.

"I have a high security item I need scanned," Tony Stark was saying and despite herself, Maggie stopped just around the corner where she could still hear the pair. Glancing about nervously she didn't see anyone and kept herself hidden from Jenny who would only order her away. She couldn't help herself, she would likely never again get a chance to see Tony Stark this close and after all, it was her fault the mass spectrometer was broken. Sort of.

"You have my assurances that we'll get that scanned as quickly as possible," Jenny was saying. "I'm sure we'll be able to…"

"I already ordered a new one. It'll be here tomorrow," Tony said. "It shouldn't have to wait that long, but S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't want this in anyone else's hands. Even with the Avengers overseeing. Infuriating, of course, as we never fail when the stakes are high, always get what we want. Always."

"I'll store it in the vault until the new machine arrives," Jenny said, starting to gush. "And I must say it certainly is an honour seeing a member of the Avengers down in the basements. And one of your fame, It really is an honour to meet you Mr. Stark."

Maggie rolled her eyes. She could see in her mind the tall blonde flicking her hair and giving the man a sparkly smile. Jenny's attempt at flirting was a little embarrassing. Maggie stopped herself from getting too disgusted; her performance in the presence of Tony Stark had been laughable as well. There was something about the man that just made a woman's knees go weak.

"Well I am famous. And rich. And successful and a genius," Tony said. "Do you like sushi? I feel like sushi. Why not give this to one of your lab men to put away and I'll buy you some sushi. I have a meeting in Tokyo, won't take but eight hours."

"What?" Maggie mouthed wordlessly. What could Tony Stark see in Jenny that he hadn't seen in her? All she had was long blonde hair, long legs, smile that could light up a room… oh. Maggie sniffed and started to walk away again. Not wanting to hear Jenny's bumbling replies. Well, not everyone could be tall and blonde with a perfect figure, somebody had to be short and brunette and.. She looked down at herself, maybe she did pack a bit of extra on her waist. Damn it.

"But as soon as the new equipment comes then I want this scanned. It needs to be scanned yesterday, and I want to be notified to be here when the analysis starts."  
An idea was starting to itch in Maggie's mind, hatching into a plot that brought a enthusiastic smile to her lips. She quickly walked to the elevator and, while taking the ride up pulled out her cell phone and hurriedly dialled her friend in maintenance.

"Hector? It's Maggie. Yeah, that Maggie. You don't know another Maggie! No don't worry, I'm not coming to see you, you don't have to sound so scared," Maggie said, tiredly. "No it's not like that, listen. I need a favour. Yes another favour. How do you feel about fixing a mass spectrometer after hours?"

o0o0o0o0o

AN:

S: And there's the first chapter for you to read and review. We love those who review. We have many feels for those who review. Mostly pink and fluffy feels. :)

Did you now Maggie was named after the baby in The Simpsons? Probably not... but she was, as I was wathing an ep. of The Simpsons while I came up with her. Out of curiosity I did a few MS tests on her, and got anti-MS and non-MS on all of them, hahahah.. Oh and one said she is anti-cool. So yeah, I hope to keep her that way, and expect you guys to tell me or K if we sway from this path. :)

Cheers ya all! :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Bad Luck Love.**

Chapter rating: K+  
Chapter warnings: None.  
Pairing: You'll see.. :)  
Spoilers: Some  
Length: Multi-chapter

Summary: He who is afraid of bad luck will never know good.

Disclaimer: We do not own anything, but the stuff we have made up :)

**Chapter 2.**

"See, this is the whole problem," Hector said holding up blackened wires that had fused together."Don't know why everyone gets so uptight about these things. Electronics is electronics. Just have to make sure the surge didn't fry anything else further down the line and we should be ok to light it up."

"You know I can't see from all the way over here," Maggie said with her arms crossed across her chest and feeling rather silly standing in the far corner of the vacant room.

"Well you're not coming over here to explode what I'm fixing, no way chica," Hector shook his head. "I know how it works. It's boom boom, then 'oh Hector I'm so sorry could you please clean up my giant mess for me please?' I hear the story all the time from you. I don't even know why I help you anymore."

"Because you have a good heart," Maggie said with a wide smile. "And I cooked for you that week Vittoria went to stay with her mother when you two were on the out."

"Yeah yeah, never gonna live THAT down, eh?" Hector bent back to his work and adjusted the mess of equipment that he had hooked up to the guts of the spectrometer. Lights and meters were flashing and flickering as Hector ran systems checks and systematically replaced broken components from a large duffel bag he'd brought with him.

Maggie had met Hector early on as the maintenance man to respond to her first major disaster at S.H.I.E.L.D. It hadn't been that bad really, at first. But somehow the whole incident had grown like a downhill snowball into a huge freaking accident that left over hundred people without any sort of electricity in the middle of one of the busiest week they had ever had in the facility. Then, out of the blue (smoke that is) had walked Hector. He had looked at the mess she had caused, then shrugged his shoulders and just started to sort everything out. It had been amazing. Hell, he had been amazing. If he hadn't been married with kids and twenty years older Maggie would have proposed on the spot.

"Ok, I think that's got it," Hector closed up his laptop and began to disconnect the testing cabling he had plugged into the mass spec. "Only one way to know. You have that thing you wanted to scan?"

"Already? That only took..." Maggie checked her watch. "Oh, only five hours."

Hector shrugged. "Vittoria packed me a sandwich. You want to get this going or what?"

Maggie shook her head vigorously, "yes! One second, I just need to grab that case from the vault."

"Vault?" Hector asked, raising an eyebrow. "what kind of thing are you scanning?"

"I... I don't know," Maggie admitted. "But Tony Stark wanted it scanned, and he said it was really important and that he needed it scanned as soon as possible and it was my fault that the mass spec was broken. I thought if you were able to fix it a bit sooner than when the new one was being delivered then maybe, well maybe it might impress Mr Stark... You know Avengers things... they always need it done right away, the fate of the world usually depends on it."

"Yeah because the stuff the Avengers deal with is _dangerous_," Hector said. "you better just call it in and let someone more qualified do this. I don't want you getting hurt."

"Oh don't worry about me, I've lived through plenty of disasters," Maggie waved off the warning and started the sequence to open the safe.

"Ok forget about you, what about me?" Hector was packing his tools up as quickly as possible, putting the extra parts he hadn't needed back into the duffel bag. "You might be the eye of the storm but everyone around you reaps the whirlwind, right? Tell me I'm wrong chica?"

Maggie paused at the vault, finger in mid air in front of the key pad. "But, this is for Tony Stark!" She said. "When have I ever been able to do a favour for Tony Stark?"

"Right, of course. I'll get that written on my tombstone," Hector grumbled. "Ok, fine. Get your thing. I'll help you run the machine. Then you call it in, alright? And make sure you follow all the lab safety rules." He pointed at the bold lettered sign notice on the wall.

"Oh I could kiss you!" Maggie said and quickly finished the vault's sequence. The door opened with a hiss.

"Oh, here it is!" Maggie found the case that Tony had been carrying near the door and pulled it out. As small as it was, it felt oddly heavy in her hands. Forbidden. She forced down any nervous feelings and took it to the analysis table. Popping the case's latches, her eyes opened wide in surprise.

Laying in a formed cushion and surrounded by small monitors indicating a thousand different readings was a shard of something that looked as if someone had taken a galaxy and forced it into a broken bit of a smashed window. What looked like stars slowly swirled in the glass at an impossible depth for a thing that was small enough to fit in Maggie's hand. The monitors around it were quiet. Hector now stood at Maggie's side.

"Is that...?" He asked.

Maggie nodded.

"Are you still going to...?"

Maggie swallowed hard, "I'm going to get a containment suit. You know, better safe than sorry."

"Yeah, me too."

Hands now cumbersome inside the heavy mitts of the containment suit, Maggie as carefully as she could lifted the shard of the tesseract.

"Easy now, and none of that... accident stuff now, ok?", Hector said from where he was standing as close as he dared. Even so he looked in constant conflict to stepping closer for a better view and running for safety.

"I know, I know. You are free to leave any time you know." Maggie said, sweat beading up on her forehead. She glanced at the cases monitors, all still monitoring the tesseract shard even though it had left the case. Everything looked good. So far.

"Like I'd miss this chica."

Maggie placed it on the analysis table and stepped away maybe a little quicker than she should have. Nothing extra ordinary happened and the case' monitors were still reassuringly quiet. She breathed a little sigh of relief.

"Ok, starting video and beginning analysis," she said into her containment suit's microphone.

"I'll get the video going, you work on the analysis," hector said and moved to a bank of computers.

Maggie nodded even though Hector couldn't see it. The mass spec hummed when she brought the power online. Hector's fix was working admirably; all

functionality was working as it should. Another relief. Now if only they could survive this without having an accident. The tesseract had nearly destroyed the city before, who knew how it would react with her powers. Maggie carefully prepared a small sample and inserted it to the machine.

The Mass Spec hummed almost contently making Maggie smile as all seemed to work as perfectly as possible for a change. She sat down to wait for the sequence to run.

"How long?" Hector asked.

"Hours. Tops." Maggie shrugged. The suit had decent ventilation, but it was still getting pretty hot. "You can go eat that sandwich if you wish. I'll call you if anything happens."

"Sure, just make sure you get out of the way if something goes wrong, you hear."

"Yeah yeah..." And as on a cue the machine stopped. And then a loud whirring sound could be heard. "No, oh no!" Maggie stabbed at the controls but the machine wouldn't respond. The monitors in the case were waving wildly and nothing was acting the way it should. "No no no no no! Not now! Hector!

Help!"

"I can't shut the machine down!" Hector yelled. "Just get back! I'll cut the hard wire!"

Clumsy in his containment suit, Hector lumbered forward towards the hard switch, a massive lever that would sever the electricity to the machinery of the room. Currently it was crackling and popping with the same exotic tones as the rest of the mass spec and the tesseract itself.

Maggie tried to get away but tripped on a cable and fell heavily forward. The tesseract was reacting more and more to the mass spec, an event horizon was opening above the mass spec, wavering in and out of existence like a fever dream. Nightmare footage from the news sprang to Maggie's mind, images of the the Chitauri and their terrible soldiers flooding from the sky filling her with terror. She couldn't cause of that to happen again, could she?

She looked and Hector had the lever in his hands, struggling to pull it all the way off. She pulled herself up and tried to run to help, but fell again, knocking over a desk. She watched helplessly as the desk crashed into a tall light standard that had been positioned to give analysis table more light. Teetering wildly, Maggie could do nothing but watch as the standard started to fall.

"Hector! Watch out!" Maggie screamed into the microphone and at the last second, Hector turned and hurled himself out of the way as the heavy standard completed it's downward crash. It hit the lever with a crushing force, pulling it down and breaking it off the lights and the mass spec instantly darkened and even the energy from the tesseract faded into mere static sparks climbing in futile effort along close metal surfaces. In moments there wasn't even that. The event horizon, once a sparkling twisting plane of nether was nowhere to be seen. A simple red emergency light was the only thing keeping them from total darkness.

Hector clamoured up from where he had fallen but Maggie could just sat.

"I... I don't think anything happened," Maggie said, a bit of wild laughter trickling into her voice. Relief flooded through her. "I don't think anything bad happened at all!"

"Oh I wouldn't say that just yet, human," said a voice from the far corner of the room. A dark, leather glad figure took a step into the half light of the emergency light. "Playing with powers way beyond your comprehension is like opening the pandora's box; you never quite know what will leap out!"

o0o0o0o0o0o

**AN:** Nope, we haven't forgotten this story. Life just got in the way for a while. But we're back now, and I promise to kick K's ass so he get's his act together. :)  
Love - S


	4. Chapter 4

**Bad Luck Love.**

Chapter rating: T  
Chapter warnings: Violence  
Pairing: You'll see.. :)  
Spoilers: Some  
Length: Multi-chapter

Summary: He who is afraid of bad luck will never know good.

Disclaimer: We do not own anything, but the stuff we have made up :)

**Chapter 3.  
**

Maggie stood dumbfounded. His face was delicate and smiling, long hair slicked backwards. He  
wore armour of the sort that one might see at comic con worn by some fan of a fantasy game. Except it  
was real and hard looking and functional. In his hand he held a staff that had the same degree of curl at  
the top of it as his smiling lips. She knew him from the news and from the S.H.E.I.L.D. situation reports.

Loki.

She knew what it might mean when the man extended one of those delicate hands to point a  
slender finger at her. She squinted her eyes shut tight and waited for whatever spell the villain was  
readying to send her way. She waited and there was nothing.

"Maggie! Get down!" Hector was yelling and pushing his way past the debris that was standing  
between him and her. Maggie peeked out from behind her hands. Loki was still pointing his finger at her  
but now he was wiggling it and looking down at his outstretched hand with an annoyed expression on his  
face.

"You must excuse me," Loki said. "This usually doesn't happen to me. I am completely at a loss...  
ah! The shard of the tesseract! It must be complicating my powers!"

"Maggie get away from him!" Hector had managed to push aside a desk that had toppled sideways  
in the accident, he was making his way slowly to the manual alarm. For whatever reason the room hadn't  
gone into lock down when the tesseract had interacted badly with the mass spec.

"Oh I don't think so," Loki turned his pointed finger at Hector but again nothing happened and  
Loki's brow furrowed on his delicate face, a long line of frustration marring his otherwise handsome  
features.

"Damn the chaos the tesseract can cause! It's seen fit to remove my power!" Loki seethed and  
resorted to flinging a chair at Hector.

"Hector, watch out!" Maggie yelled, but she didn't need to. The chair was thrown wide and ended  
up bouncing off a pillar and arcing back at the Asgardian. Hector watched incredibly as Loki smashed it  
aside with a growl and a grand sweep of his fist. He hadn't noticed, however, that his feet and become  
tangled in some loose electrical cables and the force of his angry attack on the chair caused him to loose  
balance and he sat down hard on his rump.

Maggie clapped her hands to her mouth in shock, "that was really.. bad luck." She muttered, her  
eyes wide. "Did I do that?" She asked herself, eyes opening even wider despite herself. A small, rational  
part of her mind was coming to very logical conclusions and explaining things very clearly to the rest of  
her. It would have all made a lot of sense if there hadn't been a larger and louder part of her mind that  
was screaming for her to get away before she got her fool head exploded by Loki's magic or crushed by an  
unstable part of the ceiling. Somewhere between her two arguing selves, she froze.

Hector, being the more level headed of the two, used Loki falling down to force his way forward  
and smash the alarm glass. The lights immediately went red and angry klaxons sounded through out the  
building.

"Ah... it appears to be time for my curtain call..." Loki said, climbing to his feet. "But first..." He  
lunged for the tesseract fragment, pushing aside debris and office furniture with inhuman strength in his  
efforts to gain the fragment before security could fall down upon him. Racing past Maggie, the girl could  
only cower even when he raised a hand to push her aside as well. Just as his hand was about to strike,  
however, Loki's foot landed on a piece of the floor where a falling beam had struck, weakening the  
surrounding. His foot smashed through a layer of flooring into the cable runs below and he fell forward  
again, this time his ankle catching fast in the tangle of splintered wood and concrete.

Maggie opened her eyes cautiously to see a very undignified Loki struggling to regain his footing  
from the floor.

"Maggie!" Hector was already at the door. "Get out of there! He's dangerous!"

Maggie stared at Loki thrashing to get free as soldiers suddenly exploded past Hector into the  
room, led by Clint Barton; Hawkeye of the Avengers. Stoic and strong, Clint took the whole room in with  
one glance, notched an arrow to his bow and drew it to his ear. Steel blue eyes never blinked as he let  
loose the arrow

"Stand clear Miss, we've got him!" Clint said without looking at her.

Her body finally reacting to the part of her that was screaming that she should run and not stop  
running until her collective selves were all nice and safe in her mothers house in Baltimore; Maggie finally  
bolted towards the door the soldiers had burst through moments before.

"Hold your fire until the civilian is clear!" Hawkeye was saying. As Maggie rounded the corner to  
relative safety.

Rational part of Maggie's mind was getting louder and more insistent. Maggie still couldn't quite  
make out what it was saying over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears. She collapsed on the other  
side the wall where Hector was already waiting.

"There Maggie, it's all over..." he started to say. From inside the room gunfire was starting to  
chatter, but there was another noise as well, a laughter.

"The tesseract has seen fit to gift my powers back once again!" Loki was shouting. A blast like a  
lightening strike sounded and two soldiers in body armour came flying through the door to land limp  
against the opposite wall.

Now the rational voice was becoming quite loud and stern and it was wagging a finger inside  
Maggie's head that was big enough to see clearly from space. Maggie finally understood what it was trying  
to say.

"It wasn't the tesseract taking his powers, it was me!" She gasped, clutching hold of Hector's arm  
in surprise. "I'm what was causing Loki's magic to fail! It must have something to do with my powers! I  
have to go back!"

"You can't go back, it's too dangerous!" Hector grabbed hold of Maggie.

"But... but this is mostly my fault. All my fault, even," Maggie declared twisting out of Hector's grip.  
"If I can help... I can help! I can make a difference!"

She sprinted back around the corner and stopped dead in her tracks at the scene that she saw. The  
S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers were taking cover behind pillars and debris, fighting what seemed like an army of  
laughing Loki's, each firing pulses of energy from their staffs at the men. The copies might have been  
illusions but the energy blasts were not, each scorching the ground where they struck or flinging soldiers  
through the air if a blast found it's target. Hawkeye was firing arrow after arrow, all his shots passed  
through the illusions that Loki had created, harmlessly, and stuck into walls behind quivering.

"Where are you Loki!" Hawkeye yelled, drawing back his bow yet again. "Afraid of a few mortals?"

"Hardly afraid," Loki laughed, his voice coming from all the projections at once, rebounding and  
echoing off the walls of the room. "A warrior goes to war with his weapons. You'd hardly leave your bow  
behind, hmm? But I do grow tired of these games. I've come for the tesseract shard. It is time I take what i  
came for."

All the Loki images raised their respective staffs and a point of light began growing like a  
supernova at the crown of each.

"No!" Maggie ran out into the middle of the room, stumbling over the debris and nearly falling  
twice. She ran to the tesseract. The light was filling the room now and she squinted hard to see anything  
besides spots on the edge of her vision. Then it was gone. Suddenly free from the blinding light Maggie  
opened her eyes a little wider to find herself looking right at Loki, his staff raised up and a startled look on  
his face as he was slowly coming to the same conclusion that Maggie had arrived at moments before. Her  
hand was on his chest and his appearance had turned from hansom human to the terrifying blue skin of a  
frost giant.

"You! You cancel my power!" He seethed. He struck Maggie hard in the chest, knocking her off her  
feet and forcing the breath from her body. Stumbling and gasping to try and fill her burning lungs, Maggie  
could do nothing but watch as Loki brought the staff up over his head for a killing blow. Hawkeye was  
quicker.

An arrow flew true and faster than a blink towards Loki, intent on piercing his eye. Debris from the  
still crumbling ceiling made it's way ponderously slow down, grazing the arrow just enough to send it off  
course, angling down still with killing speed. It pierced Loki's leg felling him to a knee and sticking him fast  
to the floor.

Frantically Maggie crawled away not sure if Loki was screaming out in pain, or in rage. She flinched  
when she felt a hand on her shoulder, drawing her gently up.

"I don't know what you did," Hawkeye said. "but you better come with us."

o.o.o.o.o.o.o

AN: Ok, sorry for the delay. I need to kick K more often. Please review. Love - S.


End file.
